When so-called love takes a very nasty turn.

One woman's comment that "he grabbed me and was banging my head, and I wasn't sure whether he was going to bash my head in first or strangle me" was all too typical of the horror stories told in this contribution to BBC1's Hitting Home season.

No one is safe from domestic violence. Rich or poor, famous or unknown - all can hand out or be on the receiving end of domestic violence.

The presence of familiar faces such as David Soul and Clarissa Dickson Wright might have persuaded more viewers to watch a programme on a difficult subject, but the testimony of ordinary people was sufficiently effective in laying out the details of domestic violence.

Amazingly, Drew and his wife Kath allowed cameras to be set up in their home and spy on domestic life as they tried to re-establish trust in their relationship.

Previously, police had been called after Drew violently assaulted his wife following months of increasingly abusive behaviour. Now they were trying to patch things up. "There was one time you strangled me so badly my whole face and neck went red and swollen, and you didn't let go for a long time," she reminded him.

"He had my face down on the bed so I couldn't breath properly. I was very scared how far he was taking it," she added.

The aspect that non-sufferers can't understand is how she can even allow him in the house after such an attack.

The footage we saw of their attempted reconciliation wasn't hopeful. They seemed unable to talk civilly to each other. It seemed only a matter of time before Drew snapped again.

The couple have a five-year-old daughter, who must be aware of the tension in the house. Rhys, 15, and Reah, 22, certainly knew of their father's behaviour towards their mother Stephanie. Reah, for instance, saw her pregant mother on the floor being kicked by her husband.

Stephanie is still having her jaw reconstructed following the attacks.

"In my own stupid way I thought he would change. It was a pattern, a way of life I learned to accept it," she explained.

TV presenter Wendy Turner Webster told how her first proper boyfriend had an obsession with pornography, and wanted her to do sexual things she didn't want to do. The physical abuse was not as bad as the mental abuse, she said. "Anything I liked he would target, like threatening to take a knife to my dog."

She provided a clue as to why abused people don't leave. "You have no confidence in yourself to do that. You have been brainwashed to such an extent you are nothing without this person," she said.